DAY 10: Private Eyes!

Hot Fuzz isn’t just a blockbuster. It’s a masterclass in genre homage. It’s the kind of movie that feels like it was curated by a record store clerk who spent his entire teenage years alternating between Michael Bay blowouts and classic British murder mysteries. It’s loud, it’s bloody, it’s hilarious, and it’s absolute perfection.

Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) is the ultimate super-cop. He’s so good, so efficient, and so damn professional that he’s making the rest of the Metropolitan Police look like a bunch of muppets. The solution? Ship him off to the sleepy, idyllic village of Sandford, Gloucestershire. The thinking is that if he’s bored to tears by paperwork and lost swans, he’ll just quit.

But Sandford isn’t just tea and crumpets. It’s a place where people keep dying in accidental ways—decapitations, gas explosions and conveniently falling masonry. Angel, paired with the bumbling, action-movie-obsessed Danny Butterman (Nick Frost), realizes something sinister is rotting beneath the village’s Village of the Year veneer.

Spoiler warning: It turns out the Neighbourhood Watch Alliance (NWA) is more of a murderous secret society than a concerned group of citizens, all obsessed with protecting their pristine town stats at any cost. It leads to one of the most glorious, over-the-top third acts in cinema history. Forget high-brow detective work; by the time the shotgun-wielding, sea-mine-toting finale kicks in, the movie transforms into the very thing it was paying tribute to.

Edgar Wright filled this thing with people we love. Keep your eyes peeled for Peter Jackson as a Father Christmas-clad slasher, Cate Blanchett as Angel’s ex, and Bill Nighy as the Chief Inspector. Just as much as the cameos are the references. Hot Fuzz is a massive love letter to Bad Boys II and Point Break, while the NWA constantly saying they’re doing things for the greater good makes them seem straight out of The Wicker Man. 

But it’s a real action movie, too! Simon Pegg and Nick Frost didn’t just phone it in. They trained with real firearms instructors and studied police procedures to ensure the action sequences looked legit, even when they were shooting while jumping through the air.

In a world of bloated, humorless action movies, Hot Fuzz stands tall. It understands that you can mock a genre’s tropes while simultaneously honoring them. It also has one of the grossest things I’ve seen, as Timothy Dalton falls face-first toward a miniature church steeple.

With references to A Fistful of Dollars, The French Connection, McQ, Death Wish, The Omen and Lost Highway, as well as a starring role for the video collections of director Edgar Wright, his brother Oscar and his friend Joe Cornish, this movie is a total joy of cinema for me. I’ve watched it more times than I can count and always come back for more.

DAY 9. Thrillers!

Forget your standard-issue action movies where the hero waltzes through gunfire with a quippy one-liner. Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear is the cinematic equivalent of a panic attack stretched across two and a half hours. It makes modern thrillers look like Sunday afternoon cartoons.

We find our quartet of heroes — if you can call them that — rotting away in Las Piedras, a South American backwater that serves as a collective drain for the world’s losers. There’s Mario (Yves Montand), a sarcastic Corsican playboy; Jo (Charles Vanel), a washed-up Parisian gangster whose tough-guy veneer is paper-thin; Bimba (Peter van Eyck), a stoic German haunted by the death of his father in a concentration camp and Luigi (Folco Lulli), an Italian cook who has just received a death sentence in the form of a lung condition.

They are trapped, broke and desperate. When a massive fire erupts at a Southern Oil Company well, the corporation — which effectively owns the town and treats the locals like disposable biological hardware — offers $2,000 to anyone willing to drive two trucks loaded with unstable nitroglycerin over 500 kilometers of terrain that would terrify a mountain goat.

We don’t just watch the suspense. We’re passengers. The middle hour is a relentless, pulse-pounding crawl through a series of impossible obstacles, such as a stretch of road so poorly maintained it creates rhythmic vibrations guaranteed to trigger a detonation, a wooden platform that requires driving backward and a boulder blocking the path that requires a precision-timed blast, leading to the harrowing demise of Luigi and Bimba.

The dynamic between Jo and Mario is the film’s psychological core. As the trip progresses, Jo’s legendary gangster grit dissolves into pathetic cowardice, forcing Mario to reconcile his hero-worship of the older man with the reality that Jo is a liability, not a leader.

Everything about this production screams cinematic nightmare, which only adds to the grit on screen. Filming was paused for seven months due to financing issues. When it resumed, torrential rains hit, flooding the set and keeping the cast and crew trapped in a Nîmes hotel for over a month. Then, Clouzot broke his ankle, several dozen local Romani extras went on strike, and the pyrotechnics used for the oil fire sequence nearly turned the actual shooting location into a massive wildfire.

The legendary Jean Gabin famously turned down the role of Jo, fearing that playing a coward would ruin his image as a screen idol. We also almost missed out on Montand; both Gérard Philipe and Serge Reggiani were considered for the role of Mario. The role of Linda, Mario’s devoted and tragic lover, is played by Véra Clouzot, the director’s own wife, adding an intimate, mournful layer to the film’s cynical conclusion.

The film’s ending is the ultimate universe-is-laughing-at-you punchline. After surviving the literal impossible, the triumph is rendered utterly hollow by a moment of reckless, post-traumatic hubris. It’s a gut-punch that cements the film’s status as a bleak, existential work of art.

The Wages of Fear brought Clouzot international fame, winning both the Golden Bear and the Palme d’Or at the 1953 Berlin and Cannes Film Festivals, respectively. Its success allowed him to direct another film that has lived on past the director, Les Diaboliques.

If this all sounds familiar, well, it’s been remade several times, and its influence hasn’t always been called out. Violent Road AKA Hell’s Highway was directed by Howard W. Koch (Ghost, The Odd Couple) and stars Brian Keith; a 2024 French Netflix remake and even an episode of MacGyver, “Hellfire,” in which MacGyver is thrust into an emergency when an oil well erupts into an uncontrollable fire, and he must traverse rugged terrain to retrieve volatile, aged dynamite from a remote mine.

The best-known remake is, of course, William Friedkin’s Sorcerer, which is more faithful to Georges Arnaud’s novel. Is it any happier? Let’s ask Friedkin: “I wasn’t prepared for my success or failure. I felt … buffeted by fate without any control over destiny. That’s one of the themes of Sorcerer. No matter how much you struggle, you get blown up.“

You can watch this on Tubi.

DAY 8: Zombies!

Pang (Billy Chong), a skilled martial artist, lands a local thug, Lu Dai, in jail after foiling a robbery. Upon his release, a vengeful Lu Dai hires a bumbling Taoist priest named Wu Lung to animate a small army of zombies to take down Pang.

Lu Dai is killed by his own trap, and his ghost haunts the priest, demanding to be resurrected. The priest attempts to put Lu Dai’s spirit into the corpse of a recently deceased serial killer, Kwan Wei Long. Because the killer is so evil, he returns as a powerful, free-willed vampire.

After Pang’s father — the man who trained him brutally all of his life to be a killing machine — dies, the priest tries to use his body to host Lu Dai’s spirit. The ritual is interrupted, resulting in the thug and the father sharing control of the body, forcing Pang to battle his own father’s reanimated corpse while also fighting the vampire.

You may dislike this for being incredibly cheap and for its erratic subtitle translations, such as calling corpses “salted fish.” Not me. I loved it.

Chong (born Chuang Chen Li) had an extensive career in both Hong Kong and Indonesia. Some of his other notable martial arts films include Jade Claw, A Hard Way to Die, Kung Fu Executioner, A Fistful of Talons and Kung Fu Beyond the Grave. Later in his career, he became a major household name in Indonesia, where he wrote, directed, and starred in several popular television series, including Deru Debu and Sapu Jagad.

Why do I love it? It has the balls to rip off Morricone’s Exorcist II: The Heretic score, has someone kick a man’s head clean off his body, and a vampire bad guy who not only comes out to the Bond theme but also has hands on fire. How did they do that effect? They set a man’s hands on fire, that’s how.

Oh yeah — director Shan Hua also made Portrait In Crystal, Bloody Parrot, Dynamo and Inframan. He knew what he was doing.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Day 7. Free Space!

If you’ve spent any time reading this site, you know the deal. We love a good DTV oddity, and few things are as delightfully “what-the-hell-is-this” as the career of Robert Bronzi. You know him—the Hungarian actor who looks so much like Charles Bronson it’s practically a superpower.

Usually, when you see a title like 12 to Midnight, you’re expecting a gritty, street-level vigilante flick, a direct nod to the Cannon Films era. And for a hot second, you get it. Detective Toth (Bronzi) starts in a convenience store, taking out scum like he’s Manny Cobretti. He’s drowning his sorrows after his wife meets a grizzly end and has lost his badge. But he’s soon back on the beat when a new string of murders starts, and the killer isn’t just a psycho with a knife. He’s got hair, claws, and a serious issue with the lunar cycle.

Yes, the movie decides it’s tired of just being Death Wish and pivots hard into a werewolf movie.

This flick also features UFC legend Tito Ortiz filling a niche here that feels like it was designed for a discount Vin Diesel. But the film really succeeds thanks to its atmospheric vibe, heavily bolstered by the filming locations in Centralia, PA—which is, for all intents and purposes, the real-life Silent Hill.

Is the werewolf costume a bit silly? Sure. Are the practical effects a mixed bag? Always. But that’s the charm of this movie, which finally answers the question I’ve asked a hundred times: What would happen if Charles Bronson got to shoot a werewolf?

This film continues the meta-narrative of the Bronzi Cinematic Universe, where Robert Bronzi essentially recreates the tropes of classic 70s and 80s action cinema through a low-budget, modern horror lens. I want to say, “Thank you, Bronzi.” You already showed us what would happen if Bronson fought Pazuzu in Exorcist Vengeance and a slasher in Cry Havoc. I can only hope we get to see what happens when Bronzi asks aliens, vampires and super villains if they want to meet Jesus.

You can watch this on Tubi.

DAY 6: South Korea!

Wol-ha: The Ghost of the Moon is part of the gwi-sin (ghost) subgenre. The story hits all the classic beats of Joseon-era gothic melodrama: we’ve got Wol-ha, a kisaeng (that’s a Korean geisha) who thinks she’s found a way out of the grind. She didn’t intend to go into this life anyway; she just wanted to get her student activist brother out of jail.

Wol-ha does escape by marrying a wealthy businessman, also caught up in the political upheavals, Han-sul, but here’s the problem: her mother-in-law is a total piece of work. Through a web of lies and orchestrated scandal, along with the machinations of servant Nan-ju — who wants to get into the pants of Han-sul as well as his bank account, Wol-ha and her child are discarded, destroyed and left dead in the dirt. But she isn’t staying there.

What really sets this apart from your standard ghost story, though, is the visual flair. You’re going to notice the Bava vibe almost immediately. The lighting in this thing is gorgeous. We’re talking deep shadows, high-contrast blues and purples and a psychedelic feel. It’s got that lush, saturated Technicolor-style look that makes every frame feel like a painting hanging in a haunted house.

Is the pacing a little sluggish? Sure. If you’re looking for a non-stop slasher, this isn’t it. It takes its time to let the misery soak in, allowing the weight of the betrayal to settle into your bones before the inevitable, satisfying pay-off. But when the haunting finally kicks into high gear, the film leans into its low-budget aesthetic with absolute abandon. It’s graphic, it’s theatrical and it’s got a mean streak a mile wide. We’re talking eye-gouging, acid-throwing, and a scene where the tombstone literally splits open.

There’s a reason this film became a monster hit back in the day and maintains a fervent cult following now. It’s a gut-wrenching look at the horrors inflicted upon women in a rigid society, told through the medium of a vengeful spirit who refuses to play by the rules. It’s sleazy, yet it’s high art. It’s an exercise in 1960s Asian Gothic cinema. It’s rough around the edges, occasionally melodramatic to a fault, but it’s got a heart—well, a spectral, beating heart—full of genuine malice. Sure, it takes time to get there, but when it does…

Cheol-hwi Kwon is one of those directors who built the foundation for the kind of dark, stylish, and deeply atmospheric horror that I love. He also directed the comedy musical Obuja and the historical movie  Nam.

You can watch this on YouTube.

DAY 5. Teenagers!

Is this a teen movie? It’s in Teen Movie Hell, so good enough.

Father Michael McClaren (Sam Bottoms) is what we call a cool priest. Sure, he teaches college in Florida, but he plays basketball, rides a motorcycle and is popular with the kids. The church wants him to debate former priest C.A. Thomas (Robert Lansing, 4D Man, Island Claws, Scalpel), who has written a novel claiming that man created God, on the Dick Cavett Show. Yes, this is a teen sex comedy — well, it’s closer to a relationship drama, but the poster wants you to think it’s a sex comedy — in which Dick Cavett shows up. 

This would all be normal except for two things.

One, it’s not that crazy that a girl named September Lane (Renee Coleman) falls in love with Father Michael. You may know her as left fielder Alice Gaspers from A League of Their Own and the evil leaper Alia on Quantum Leap. Or perhaps as the kidnap victim John Candy is trying to save in Who’s Harry Crumb? Man, her IMDb is awesome, because it contains this: “In 1995, Coleman left the film business and returned to school, where she earned her Mythological Studies doctorate (with an emphasis on Depth Psychology) at Pacifica Graduate Institute in 2002. She currently lives with her husband and their four children in Santa Clarita, California, where she works in a private practice as a certified DreamTender.”

The second thing that makes this strange is that, every once in a while, this movie goes back to caveman times, complete with naked women. That’s why this was originally titled Return to Eden. However, those parts really have next to nothing to do with the rest of the movie.

When Thomas and Father Michael do finally debate with Dick Cavett, Thomas wins, saying that every man has to find his own God. So Michael goes off to look up September, and they turn into naked cave people. The end. Really, that’s how it ends.

Things happen in this movie that make no sense, even more than you’d expect, like a priest randomly being into aerobics, September falling for the holy man, and him saying he loves her. Why? She’s moody and constantly argues with him. I mean, that’s almost every woman I’ve dated, so I think I answered my own question.

This was the first role for Sherrie Rose, who would go on to be in movies like Killer Crocodile, Cy Warrior, American Rickshaw and Guns & Lipstick (which has a totally amazing cast of Sally Kellerman, Jorge Rivero, Wings Hauser, James Hong, Sonny Landham, Joe Estvez, Robert Forster, Cassie Yates and girls-only adult star Felicia). Plus, Page Hannah appears, and she’d go on to be a victim of the oil slick in Creepshow 2.

After School was directed by William Olsen, who also made Rockin’ Road Trip, Getting It On, Southern Belles and Mastering the Theremin. This had four writers: Hugh Parks (the director of Shakma!), Joe Tankersley, John Lind and Rod McBrien, who wrote the music for the movie Club Fed, which I must have cast, as it stars Burt Young, Judy Landers, Sherman Hemsley, Karen Black, Mary Woronov, Lyle Alzado, Wally George, Dee “Queen Kong/Matilda the Hun” Booher, Lance “Proctor” Kinsey and Debbie Lee Carrington. 

I was not ready for this movie.

You can watch this on Tubi.

DAY 4. Blaxploitation!

Forget the logo that starts this. Sure, Troma distributed this, but it’s alien to their usual dreck, and it has an actual Screen Actors Guild cast, a gorgeous, smoky, neo-noir aesthetic, a contemporary R&B soundtrack and a mostly Black cast and crew.

Directed, written, produced and starring James Bond III, Def by Temptation is the story of Joel (Bond) and his best friend K (Kadeem Hardison), who will face the temptations — right there in the title! — of the flesh. Joel is a wholesome, clean-cut minister-in-training from North Carolina who is having a crisis of faith. Seeking clarity, he heads to the big, bad streets of New York City to visit his childhood best friend, K, who has become an actor.

K’s favorite place to chill is a local bar where a mysterious, stunningly beautiful woman known only as the Temptress (Cynthia Bond) hangs out. The problem? She’s a literal, soul-sucking succubus. She picks up womanizers, unfaithful husbands and anyone succumbing to the sins of the flesh, takes them home and violently obliterates them. When Joel arrives in town, his pure, virginal, holy aura becomes the ultimate prize for her. What follows is a wild, supernatural clash featuring possessed fortune tellers, holy water cocktails, killer television sets and Bill Nunn as a cop who specializes in supernatural cases. Oh, and Samuel L. Jackson shows up in flashbacks as Joel’s minister father, plus R&B royalty Melba Moore shows up as the doomed Madam Sonya, along with cameos from jazz saxophonist Najee and singer Freddie Jackson.

Def by Temptation operates on its own wavelength. It’s a horror movie, but it’s deeply rooted in the traditions of Black religious melodrama. It treats the power of faith and the threat of damnation with absolute seriousness, even when the special effects get wonderfully absurd. So you get stuff like K being violently sucked into his own television set, followed by an explosion of blood and guts from the screen; demon bartenders driving limousines and a climactic bedroom showdown involving a crucifix and some delightfully gooey practical effects.

Cynthia Bond is absolutely hypnotic as the Temptress. She balances an elegant, icy allure with moments of pure, feral malice. The chemistry between James Bond III and Kadeem Hardison feels incredibly genuine, giving the movie an emotional anchor before the supernatural craziness takes over. And the house it was shot in? It was owned by producer Hanna Moss and her husband, Laurence Fishburne.

Made for just $5 million over four weeks, Def by Temptation is a time capsule of a very specific era of independent filmmaking. It’s got style, a killer soundtrack, a great cast before they hit the stratosphere, and enough weird horror imagery to keep me happy. Why did I take so long to watch it?

You can watch this on Tubi.

DAY 2. Cartoons!

Hungarian director György Kovásznai’s Bubble Bath (also known as Habfürdő) is a wildly idiosyncratic, deeply personal and totally irresistible animated musical that feels like it shouldn’t exist, yet I’m so incredibly glad it does.

Zsolt (voiced by Kornél Gelley, sung by Albert Antalffy) is a walking ball of neuroses. He looks like a stoned hippie alleycat or an Eastern European Frank Zappa stuffed into a rented tux. He’s supposed to be getting married, but instead, he panics and bursts into the apartment of Anikó (voiced by Vera Venzcel, sung by Kati Bontovits), the best friend of his fiancée. She’s a medical student who looks like a curvier, leggier, post-modern Betty Boop. What follows isn’t a high-stakes adventure, but a hyper-stylized, claustrophobic bottle episode of romantic indecision. They are two people deeply unsure of their attraction to each other, terrified of the choices they’ve made, and completely paralyzed by what the future holds.

To describe Bubble Bath’s visual style is to sound like a lunatic. Kovásznai mashes up 1920s Art Deco elegance, 1960s psychedelia and late 1970s decadence. The animation is incredibly restless and endlessly creative. Characters morph, dissolve and vibrate with nervous energy.  The backgrounds shift with the characters’ psychological states. It’s a musical where the songs don’t just advance the plot; they deconstruct the characters’ psyches in real-time.

The main inspiration for the film struck György Kovásznai when he realized most animated movies focused on bringing fantasy worlds to life with realistic animation. Reflecting on the popularity of 1970s science fiction, fantasy, disaster and adventure films, he decided that these genres actually worked better in live-action. He argued that because children are exposed to animation from a young age, they inherently know cartoons aren’t real, making any attempt at realism pointless.

Instead of making a Disney-style fantasy film, as most animation of the tiome did, he wondered if the medium was mature enough to tell real-world stories. Kovásznai wanted to create complex, authentic human characters grappling with deep personal and societal issues.

Sadly, this went down as the biggest flop in Hungarian animation history. Theatrical screenings were chaotic; angry adults and crying children routinely stormed out of theaters, prompting some cinemas to quietly swap the film for a different movie just to keep audiences in their seats.

Kovásznai was reportedly devastated by the overwhelming backlash from critics, audiences and the box office alike. However, the reception wasn’t entirely hostile. A few contemporary reviews praised the project. For instance, critic and art historian István Kristóf Nagy claimed he couldn’t find a single fault in the film, confidently predicting it would find a massive audience.

In the wake of the disaster, technical director Jenő Koltai published a lengthy essay in Pannónia Studio’s magazine analyzing the failure. He concluded that the general public was simply unready for an animated movie that tackles realistic urban themes. After its disastrous release, the film was largely forgotten until the 2000s, which sparked a massive resurgence of interest in Kovásznai’s broader body of work. Because of this profound cultural shift, the film is now officially categorized in Hungary as a nemzedéki közérzetfilm—a “generational mood film.“

Tragically, this was Kovásznai’s only feature film. A painter, philosopher and animator who refused to conform to Western or Soviet commercial standards, he passed away from leukemia in 1983 at the age of 49, leaving behind a legacy of short films and this lone, sparkling anomaly.

Thankfully, the National Film Institute in Hungary has beautifully restored the film, and the cinematic saints over at Deaf Crocodile have given it its first-ever official U.S. release. You can watch it on Tubi.

Day 1. ‘90s Action!

Also known as Deadlock when released on VHS, this made-for-HBO movie stars Rutger Hauer as Frank Warren. He’s an electronics wizard and a master jewel thief who thinks he’s got it made after orchestrating a massive diamond heist. His crew consists of his gorgeous fiancée, Noelle (Joan Chen), and his long-time buddy, Sam (James Remar). But there is no honor among thieves. The moment the diamonds are safely stashed away, Sam and Noelle turn on Frank and leave him for the cops. Frank gets pinched, but he keeps his mouth shut about where the diamonds are hidden.

Cut to Camp Holliday, an experimental future prison that makes your standard maximum-security joint look like a country club. Run by the deliciously sadistic Warden Holliday (Stephen Tobolowsky, who seems to be having the time of his life), there are no iron bars or barbed wire fences here. Instead, the facility relies on the Wedlock system: every inmate is fitted with a bulky, electronic collar containing a proximity-fused explosive charge. Every collar is secretly linked to another random prisoner. If you move more than 100 yards away from your unknown partner, or if anyone tries to tamper with the hardware, BOOM—both of your heads get blown clean off your shoulders.

Naturally, Warden Holliday tries to torture the location of the diamonds out of Frank (using a sensory deprivation tank, which is for relaxation, not interrogation) but Frank isn’t talking. Things get complicated in the yard when Frank’s collar starts chirping, leading him to discover that his explosive soulmate is Tracy Riggs (Mimi Rogers), a woman claiming she was completely framed. One afternoon, when Frank fights a fellow inmate named Emerald (Basil Wallace) to the death, Tracy takes the ambulance he’s in and makes a run for it.

Sam and Noelle are working with the Warden to get the diamonds while Frank and Tracy are on the run. They hate each other’s guts, they’ve got the cops and a pair of heavily armed betrayers on their tails, and they have to stay within a football field’s distance of one another at all times or face instant decapitation.

What follows is an awesome mix of roadside tension, an underground collar-removal operation gone wrong (resulting in Noelle icing Sam) and a final showdown with the Warden himself, who has been tracking the duo via helicopter. Frank proves he’s the smarter criminal, tricking the Warden into wearing a collar and tossing the linked match into the departing chopper. Distance limit breached, chopper goes kaboom, and Frank and Tracy ride off into the sunset with a bag full of diamonds to live happily ever after.

Yes, in a 1990s action movie, there’s not much of a line between love and hate.

Wedlock is pure, unadulterated cinematic comfort food. Lewis Teague, as always, brings genuine studio-level competence to a B-movie premise, keeping the action moving fast enough that you don’t have time to question the prison logic. The chemistry between Hauer and Rogers works surprisingly well, turning the film into a twisted, high-stakes romantic comedy masquerading as a dystopian action flick. Tobolowsky steals every single scene he’s in as the Warden, playing him not as an imposing brute, but as a petty, bureaucratic psychopath. 

Hauer has weird hair, strange fashion choices and seems barely awake at some points. There are also some weird plot points, like how everyone in prison gets named after a color, can go to Magic Hour and sleep with anyone they want, and in the meantime, work on electronics. And while Frank is out for revenge, Noelle is just out to ruin the wedding of the ex who set her up.

Writer Broderick Miller recycled this same idea for another cable movie, Deadlocked: Escape from Zone 14, where Esai Morales is breaking out Nia Peeples. 

Shout out to Vern, who points out. that despite this being set in the future, there’s a movie theater showing a double of Graffiti Bridge with the Seagal movie Marked for Death. That’s amazing. Basil Wallace was also in the movie, playing Screwface and his twin brother. And oh yeah, Camp Holiday Prison is totally the command center from Power Rangers. Really — it’s the House of the Book on the American Jewish University’s Brandeis-Bardin Campus in Simi Valley, CA.

No other movie has Rutger Hauer and Mimi Rogers wearing traditional African clothing.

You can watch this on Tubi.